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On certain weekends in May, June and October, hotels in Hong Kong are hard to book. They are fully packed with mainland Chinese students who arrive with piles of exam-preparation and Barron 3500 vocabulary sheets. It’s early to bed to get enough sleep to set off bright the next morning for the five-hour SAT test.

There is no official SAT site in mainland open to the general public. Whether from Shanghai, 700 miles away, or Xinjiang, 2,100 miles away, Chinese students must fly to the closest test location, Hong Kong. And more and more are making the trip. Since 2012, the annual number of mainland Chinese SAT test takers has exceeded 40,000. Due to the increasing influx of SAT takers into Hong Kong, the city has set up a special oversize test site to fit 10,000 students at a time. Cost for one student’s three-day SAT travel is around $1,000, not including some must-have luxury goods they piggyback on their way home.

Even before students make the costly trek to Hong Kong, thousands of dollars may have already been spent on various test-preparation courses. According to New Oriental, China’s largest and most popular study-abroad education group, course fee can cost anywhere from $1,000 to $12,000, depending on the class size, from 500 to 6.

However, SAT course fee pale in significance when compared with college application service costs. This mushrooming sector provides a series of college application-related services: introduce Asian students to the American education system and culture; help students target their safety and reach schools; and brainstorm personal essay ideas and polish their writing, among others.

Starting 2012, Taurus Education, one of the most successful agencies headquartered in Shanghai, began to charge students $15,000 to $32,000. AIC Education, another major study abroad agency, charges $20,000 to $40,000 in 2014. These companies recruit marketable Ivy League graduates and former admission officers from the U.S. as consultants. Chen Zhang, CEO of AIC, says, “We bring America’s best college graduates to China. They provide individualized and high quality essay trainings and application service for students before they go to the U.S. A good offer is not enough; we emphasize the learning process.”

The new industry ranges from SAT tutoring all the way up to premium services. For example, there are visa application specialists who fill out F-1 forms for students. General consultants will book flight tickets and arrange college tours. Some manage the process so closely that students receive admission letters without touching an application. After all, spending $60,000 on college applications alone is just the overture of four-year tuition and fees still to come.

Taurus is known as a feeder of elite school enrollees in China. Given that every year very few mainland students matriculate at top private colleges like Harvard and Yale, in 2014 Taurus was able to help four students to get into Harvard, six to Yale, three to Stanford and three to M.I.T. In addition, many were accepted into increasingly foreign student-friendly public schools, including University of California schools and University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which have witnessed a tenfold growth in the number of Chinese students. In total, over 600 Taurus students were accepted by the U.S. top colleges in 2014. Impressive application results further stimulate price growth. Now, Taurus service can cost up to $50,000. Requests to speak with Taurus were turned down.

Chen Yijia, a University of California, Santa Barbara freshman, paid $17,000 to AKAD Education, a study abroad service company based in Shanghai. Chen’s college coach identified her extracurricular activities and academic works as selling points for her application essays. “Without my counselor, my essays wouldn't have been chiseled so deeply,” says Chen. She also points out a cultural barrier that Chinese applicants encounter. “We tend to think too much about what the universities want and then write a goal-oriented essay to satisfy the admission officer's taste.” Students tend to list their awards and recognitions to show their credentials instead of addressing their intellectual and mental growth as a person. A college consult, from a third-person perspective, can help students to direct their own voice more effectively.

For top private colleges, Chinese applicants face more fierce competition than their American peers because qualified applicants hugely outnumber seats for admissions. In 2012 MIT had an overall admit rate of 8.9%, but the admission rate for international students was 3%. In 2014, University of California Berkeley accepted 20% of domestic applicants but 10% of international applicants. “We can get lost during the process due to peer pressure, pressure from parents and our own expectations.” says Lou Yichen, another freshman set to attend Wesleyan University in Connecticut this fall after working with Zeal Education Group, another college agency.

Applying to college by oneself can be risky. Even the best students can be rejected. A notorious case from 2011 saw a Beijing student, Li Taibo, with a 2240 SAT and various leadership experiences turned away by each of the 11 schools he applied to.

Rising middle-class families, parents’ willingness to pay and an escalating number of American college applicants in China temp many entrepreneurs to delve into the industry. As competition heats up, study-abroad companies in their early stage desperately need outstanding application results to brand their names. Some enterprises establish scholarship programs. They set the amount according to the rank of schools that students are accepted into. For example, Zeal Education Group awards $2,500 to students who place into a top 10 school. Some even persuade students who DIYed their successful applications to sell the “copyright” of their stories at $3,000 to $8,000, depending on the school rank. Companies are able to attract customers by posting these “application results” on their own websites.